


arm's length

by vaudelin



Series: supernatural codas [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Episode: s13e02 The Rising Son, Episode: s13e03 Patience, Episode: s13e04 The Big Empty, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Grieving Dean, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Season/Series 13, Season/Series 13 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-29
Updated: 2017-11-04
Packaged: 2019-01-25 20:50:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12540932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vaudelin/pseuds/vaudelin
Summary: Dean cannot be a role model. Maybe Cas could’ve. But not Dean.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I hate leaving things with an unhappy ending, even if the content is decidedly bleak. So - happy ending forthcoming.

It takes less than four days to break the kid, or at least teach him that he’s bound to be broken.

The kid had to have seen it coming, considering how his mother had coached him into a body with some muscle mass. He showed up knowing that the world is out for him, that life is a nasty habit nobody’s learned yet how to kick. But there would be people here to help him too, Kelly had promised. Had Dean cared he would’ve pitied the kid, for buying into that lie.

There would have been people. Maybe. If only there had also been Cas.

As it is, Dean can’t do much off autopilot. He drinks, he snarks, he drives. He pushes himself until the road blurs and Cas’ ghost crawls out from where it haunts him in the ditches. The last time Dean lurches the car so hard that Sam pulls them over in a speck of Wyoming for a few hour’s shuteye.

It is here that the kid shows just how royally fucked he is, hunching into human nature, bending himself into something that Dean might like. The kid has untapped powers and he’s mimicking the sloppy way Dean eats. Of all the limitless opportunities in the world, this is what he chooses. Like Dean needs more of a sign that the kid is screwed.

Dean cannot be a role model. Maybe Cas could’ve. But not Dean.

Ask a lion not to be a lion. Ask the devil not to be the devil. But here the kid sits, mauling burgers, playing like he doesn’t have teeth.

There’s no patience left in Dean, now. The tv, the physical tics. All these opportunities to bond, these little glimpse into what makes up the kid, they all tie back to Cas. How can Dean open himself when his grief floods every chink in his armour, slipping through the cracks and crevices that break their way?

Dean’s reaction to pain is to man up, tamp it down. So he does, and Jack takes this like it’s wise advice. He calls it a sign of maturity, but Dean doesn’t think what he’s doing classifies anywhere near mature. Desperate, maybe. There’s not a man behind these motions, only a hollowed out shell.

The kid’s so eager for someone to like him that Dean can’t stomach it. He should probably feel worse about promising to kill him. He should probably feel anything at all. But it doesn’t come, even as he sticks his headphones on and scratches open scar tissue. Rage and grief hang an arm’s length away.

So Dean shuts it down, shuts it up. Stops the kid from seeing Dean as another adult to please.

Someone has to wake him up to the realities of this world.

After the devil’s gate, Sam doubles down on the idea of training the kid, but it’s a waste of time, hoping whatever they say might stick. It’s a long shot, and when Dean stabs at his optimism Sam just says that Jack saved them, that when it came between them and the demon, the kid chose them.

Dean’s dealt with this brand of naivety before. The kid only saved them because he sees them as friends. So what happens when the kid stops seeing them like that? When he starts seeing Sam’s machinations to get back Mom? What happens when Jack stops thinking of them as people to please?

Sam thinks Jack can be moulded by whomever he trusts, and that they better hope that he trusts them. But Dean sees it. His brother is too attached, believing they can put a bit and saddle on the kid’s abilities, make him smile as they pry out his teeth. But it’s fate, whatever the kid is. What he will become. Dean is not inclined to believing these kind of things, but his will is gone. Free will is dead. After all that’s happened who are they now, to fight this tide? Just two men and a black car, drifting moorless, too many holes punched through their sails.

When Missouri calls, Dean jumps on the excuse to escape the bottles building at his bedside. He goes alone, eager to leave Sam and his fool’s errand behind. Between Jody and the job, he needs the old routine. Just something to remind him he can live through this.

Maybe not live. It’s too much to ask. Survive. Just let him survive. But then Missouri hugs him, says _Oh, honey_ with that mournful look, and Dean’s done for already. Jody holds his arm, too knowing, and Dean is not going to make it through this case in one piece.

Neither does Missouri, of course. Should have known. Dean has a proven track record demonstrating his inability to keep family safe. She becomes another body to bury. Just one more grave to fill. Patience becomes another soft kid exposed to this bent and brutal world.

“If you get a chance at normal, you take it,” Dean tells her, like an order, like he ever followed that advice.

He had normal there, in front of him, for years and years and years. Smiling a little smile, tilting his head just so. Just an arm’s length away. But Dean never took the step. Too much of a coward. Never kissed. Never even held Cas’ hand.

The drive back to the bunker comes with a fresh six-pack, one Dean sorely regrets not cracking open when Sam starts laying the blame on him. Claims he and Jack are no different, that they’re both screwed up kids dealt a bad hand of cards, but now Dean’s got into his head and Jack doubts that he’s worth saving.

That’s Dean’s legacy, the real way Jack is imitating him. Dean feels nothing, but it almost makes him grin.

Sam talks like he has Dean cased. Like this is just another slump where they hit their chins on rock bottom. They’ve taken lumps before and gotten up again, but Dean knows it’s different this time. This time, the hit stuck. It came with a force that sent his broken heart up in smoke across that lake.

They’ve been to bottom and got back up. But Dean doesn’t know how to empty this grave. He doesn’t have the reserves to defy what’s coming, not this time. Not without Cas here, guiding him, helping Dean understand just what made Jack worth what he did.

So Dean shouts. He closes a fist around his grief and pulls it up to his face, screaming about that damn kid and the paradise he’s lost. And Sam, damnit—Sam just takes it. He closes the shutters and weathers out the storm.

If Cas were here, it would have gone better. Cas would have found the way to bring him and Sam onto the same page.

There’s no middle ground, without him. The fissures between them keep growing and growing.


	2. Chapter 2

So Dean cannot be a role model. Let him try to be something else instead.

* * *

Chasing work keeps him busy, keeps his mind off the things Dean has no power over, the foreboding way his life feels so distinctly out of control. A case comes up in Wisconsin, so plainly a salt and burn that he thinks they can handle it without having to watch one more loved one die. Would be a nice change of pace, really.

Sam insists on including the kid, pointing to the way they’ve all been cooped up for too long inside the bunker. Dean counters that keeping the kid here keeps the rest of the world safe; it also keeps them safe too. Hell only knows what Dean will do if he loses his brother. At this point, Sam’s about the only support he’s got left.

But Sam argues, insists he won’t go without the kid. It feels like tempting fate to head out with Sam still angry with him, but Dean needs the backup—needs the normalcy—that his brother brings, so he caves. The kid tagging along is just the shit slice that gets served alongside Dean’s cake. Something bad for something good. Good always comes with a price.

What they don’t expect, when they’re searching the murder site, is the absence of EMF readings, or the body yet left in the grave. While trying to wrap his head around it Dean barks out orders for the kid to fill in the hole he’s made, keeping him busy in a way he can be trusted. No people around, only dead bodies. If the kid snaps by accident and kills them, hopefully he’ll take himself out too.

“Don’t talk to him like that,” Sam spits, tracking Dean back to the car. “All these orders. You’re starting to sound like Dad.”

Dean hefts his friend JD and pulls long at the bottle.

If that doesn’t give him an indication of where he stands with his brother, nothing will.

Maybe this chasm is too wide to cross. Maybe the kid has cost Dean everything—literally everything—now.

* * *

Alright, so the job won’t cut it. Dean can try something else. Try treating the kid like a stranger instead.

A stranger, granted, that hangs beside them mid-case, asking questions and pointing out how it’s supposed to be bad when they lie. A stranger that stares at sauerkraut and fondles flower petals and looks at Dean like he can see more to Dean than Dean wishes was available. A stranger with no social cues, a complete inability to read human interactions and gauge the proper way to react—

Dean cannot, should not, be thinking of Cas, not when they’re knocking on the door of a grief counselor, for christ’s sake.

His fist seizes, plants against the door jamb. Trembles and leans long enough for Dean to regain his strength.

Trying to keep everything together is gonna kill him, and with the way things are going Dean going to be glad when it comes. The counselor comes, the kid brings up his dead mother, and Sam hops on for the ride. They have the great idea of posing as patients and the counselor, Mia, buys it. Now Dean’s sitting bitch between them, tamping down his issues while Sam brings their mother’s spectre out in open air.

Mia wants them to talk, but they’re on shaky ground. The foundation of their world is gone, pillar after pillar knocked down. Dean cannot see the use in staring at the rubble and feeling sad about it. It doesn’t undo the damage, doesn’t unsplit his knuckles or undrink those bottles or unshake those heaving sobs that hit him in the middle of the night, when his bed is empty and the sheets are cold and if only, if only, Dean had been given the chance to warm him. To wrap his arms around Cas and tuck him tight to his chest.

No warning. No goodbye. No closure.

If that ain’t the way it’s always been between them.

Sam tells the counselor, “My brother, he’s not processing his grief.” Like it’s easy, gathering up pain of this magnitude and swallowing it, pushing it down until it settles like bedrock in Dean’s damaged, broken soul. There’s nothing left but the pain; the absence; the distinct sensation that the space around Dean is missing something and he will never get it back.

Mia calls him out, after Sam storms out. Points to the rubble in Dean’s wake, at the chasm between them and says, _Look, this is your making_.

Dean wasn’t like this. Isn’t like this. Not always, he hopes. He’s not someone who would intentionally drive Sam away.

Except Sam’s left before.

_You’re starting sound like Dad._

Maybe Dean’s the stranger here after all.

* * *

Before they leave, Dean steps back into Mia’s office one last time. He hands her his phone, with the gallery open. Tells her to pick one. It burns him, to bring his grief within arm’s reach. But this is his only chance.

Charlie’s in there. His mom. Even Crowley, if she decides to flip back far enough. But Mia knows. She must, considering the way she pauses on one photo, long enough that Dean gets nervous and glances over her shoulder, just a small look that tells him what she sees.

It’s him. And Cas. One of those times when they were chowed down at a diner eating burgers. Dean thinks he remembers that particular night. They were trawling the free wifi while researching a would-be werewolf case, and when Sam’s cell died Dean passed his own brick over. Sam called Cas’ attention up to him, snapped the photo, and with Cas’ gummy grin beaming like starlight Dean looked over to him and thought, _Shit, I’m in love_.

Just this moment, and moments like it. Moments upon moments, forever.

It would have been enough.

There must be something about the way Dean looks in that photo, for the way that Mia looks at him now. Softer, maybe. Less judgmental. “Bad breakup?” she asks.

Dean scrubs a hand over his head. “Dead.”

Mia’s gaze drops. “A lot of that happening around you.”

Dean bobs his head, nodding too many times. Pops the p when he answers, “Yep.”

She wanders off with his phone, flipping through it. Dean wonders what else she’ll find.

* * *

When she comes back, she comes with Cas. It’s Cas, even though it’s really Mia; Dean cannot—should not—confuse the two.

She sits down beside Dean, his suit rustling. Clears her throat. Keeps her hands blessedly to herself.

“I don’t know what to do,” Dean confesses, staring down at the coffee table, trying not to ignite his grief. “I’m just trying to keep it together, but everything is falling apart.”

“They don’t need you to hold them together,” Mia says, with Cas’s voice. “They just need you to be present. With them, instead of pushing them away.”

The apple in his throat bobs dry. “I need you too, man. Need you here. Can’t keep together without you.”

This Cas, this facsimile, says nothing, and Dean is glad for it. He knew before this delusion even began that it’s not gonna work. All it would take is one wrong detail for Dean to shatter again.

Mia must know it too. She keeps to herself, sitting quietly. That ugly trenchcoat pools on the couch between them. Cas’ hands flex on his knees. Dean cannot look up, cannot look at him. If so much as a hair is out of place, if she couldn’t match the electric blue of his eyes—

Just his quiet breathing, the small shifts Cas makes to get more comfortable.

It can be enough. Let it be enough.

Dean’s eyes prickle, in spite of himself. He drops like a dead man onto Cas’ shoulder, staring down, staring anywhere else.

Cas’ arm wraps around him, just like he always imagined. The heat of him is real again, if only for a moment.

Dean lets himself crumble.

* * *

“You did good today,” Dean tells Jack, when he finds him stock-still in the kitchen. Frozen, like Jack expects him to come at him, maybe yell or hit him.

Dean shakes off the ghost of John settling into his bones. Not a role model. Not a father, not a stranger. Not a brother, but an ally. A friend. Let him try, at least. Let him keep this delusion.

His brother, though; Dean won’t let himself lose Sam. He needs to do something.

So Dean apologises. Calls himself out, tells Sam that he’s right. Fate is heavy, they both know it, but destiny doesn’t need to dictate the kid. Jack could be what he wants, maybe. Dean doesn’t believe it yet, but he will try. They just need to fight for his chance.

“I need you to keep faith for the both of us,” Dean says, to Sam, to anyone, an open and plaintive plea. “Because right now I don’t believe in a damn thing.”

Sam has to know it’s not just about Mom, not anymore. Dean hasn’t been subtle in his grief.

* * *

Later, when Dean’s in his room losing an argument with his buddy Jack Daniels, his cell phone rings.

It’s late, and there’s no one left alive to bother him.

The number that comes up, it shouldn’t be there. Shouldn’t be possible.

Dean’s handle trembles, fumbling for the answer lock, weakening altogether when he hears the thunder rumble, “Hello, Dean.”

His knees knock out, collapsing like pillars of sand. He wonders for a second whether it’s Mia, except no, not with this number, she couldn’t—

“Dean?” the call says again.

Dean blinks, knuckles his eyes. Comes back wet. “Cas?”

Interminable silence follows, so long Dean swears it is a dream. Then Cas tells him, “Will you come pick me up? I think I’m outside of—” and Dean’s nodding, saying, “Yeah, yeah,” because at this point Cas could say he was standing neck-deep in Purgatory and Dean would find a way to go get him.

Given any sort of chance, Dean will always take him back.

**Author's Note:**

> Also on tungler [here](https://vaudelin.tumblr.com/post/166894819008/arms-length) and [here](https://vaudelin.tumblr.com/post/167125227993/arms-length-22). Thank you for reading!


End file.
